


In Between

by Tabithian



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Batman (Comics), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Red Robin (Comics), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My formula for living is quite simple.  I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night.  In between, I occupy myself as best I can.  ~Cary Grant</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Between

When Tony Stark asks, half-jokingly if he can handle the Avengers, Phil Coulson gives him a look and says, "I think I'll be fine," and tries to ignore the feeling of not-quite-right because they're all so close, so damned close but not close enough.

********

Fifteen years ago, give or take, a dimensional rift opened in Gotham. No one knows where it came from or why it formed, just that when it disappeared it took one of Gotham's protectors with it. Fifteen years, give or take, and there are days when it feels like nothing's changed all that much. New allies, new enemies, but other than that - 

"Don't do this to me, Barton," he says, voice low and angry because he's not letting Clint do this to him. Not now. "Dammit Clint, _fight_." Phil (Tim) has lost too much over the years, too many people, and he'll be damned if he loses more. Clint (shades of Dick and Roy), but so much more than that, because it's _Clint_ , and Phil's (Tim's) objectivity went out the window long ago where he's concerned. Maybe there was some bias there in the beginning for the things he reminded Phil (Tim) of, but not anymore. Now it's just Clint, and damn him for being an idiot.

"Coulson?" Clint's voice is weak, thready, but.

Phil (Tim) glances at Natasha, guarding their backs while they wait for reinforcements. He knows she's seeing everything, fear and anger and. _Everything_. 

"SHIELD agents are on the ground," she says, giving him a look. 

Phil (Tim) leans back on his heels, one hand resting on Clint's chest, the steady beat of his heart like a lifeline.

********

Phil (Tim) stares at the people behind the interrogation glass. Stranger things have happened, here and in Gotham. (Loki and that damned staff of his, and Phil (Tim) had gotten soft to not see that coming. At least this time he didn't lose any internal organs.)

"You know them?" Fury asks, single eye on him.

Because Phil (Tim) knows everyone in other dimensions. (If only that were true, or a version of true, maybe he could have found Gotham sooner.)

Phil (Tim) breathes deep and nods once. "Yes, sir," he says, taking in the changes fifteen years have left on Dick, Kon, and Bart. "I do."

Fury gives him a look, and gestures to the door. "After you."

Phil (Tim) looks at him sharply, but Fury's. Smiling, wry, maybe. Like maybe he understands how unstable the world feels under Phil's (Tim's) feet just now.

"Sir," he says. (Fifteen years, give or take, and even then Tim (Phil?) hadn't been the person Dick and the others remembered.)

********

Tony keeps eying Phil (Tim) like he's dying to say something, but, and maybe it's a good thing he and Steve have made up (and out, a part of his traitorous mind points out). Clint has made himself scarce which, Phil (Tim) doesn't know how to fix because. Because.

********

"You're not coming back, are you." It's not a question, just a matter of Dick knowing him that well, even with the changes, because at heart, he's still Tim. Still that dumb kid who didn't have a clue what he was getting himself in for, and maybe still doesn't, all these years later.

Tim (Phil) breathes deep. Looks around at the barely controlled chaos that's Avenger's Tower on a good day, thinks about his team and all the people they aren't, but more importantly the people they _are_ and looks at Dick. Years, for years he'd dreamed of being able to go back, go _home_ and never realized the home he was making for himself here.

Dick smiles, tired, sad. Understanding. "Yeah," he says, eyes flicking to the ceiling rafters Tim (Phil) knows Clint's hiding in. "I figured."

Tim (Phil) smiles, but. "I wanted to," he says. "God, Dick. I did everything I could for so long." He stops, because. He'd tried so hard for so long, and none of it ever worked.

Dick looks at him for a long moment, and then pulls him into a crushing hug. "I know, little brother," he says. "I know."

Tim (Phil) holds on because. _This_. He's missed this so much, for so long, and he wants to hold on to it for as long as he can, knowing he doesn't get to keep it. (Fifteen years late in coming, and it's better than he imagined because it's real.)

********

He gets a week with them before Tony says the device he cobbled together in his workshop with Bruce and Reed is working, and he's not entirely sure if Tony's being nice and giving him more time, or if it really had taken them that long to figure it out. (For once he doesn't care which one it is, grateful for what little time he's been given.)

Kon and Bart are so much the way he remembers them, tempered by time and experience.

"You have a life here." Kon's. Kon's the person Tim always knew he would be. More confident, sharper in a way. And Bart. Bart is Bart is Bart, brilliant and outrageous and so, so amazing. 

"I." He can't. There's nothing he can _say_.

Kon snorts, drags him into a hug that Bart's quick as ever to join, and Tim (Phil) tries to pretend it's not breaking his heart all over again having to say goodbye to them.

********

Later, once they're gone, he goes to find Clint. He's back in the ceiling, and it's the work of moments to join him. It takes far longer before Clint says anything.

"You never said." 

Phil (Tim) snorts because really, what could he have said? "It never came up," he says, which is a partial lie. It came up all the damn time for the first few weeks SHIELD had had him, before it even went by SHIELD, when he'd been stupid enough to get caught. A new world, a new set of rules and he'd been woefully behind at the time, hadn't had time to get a lay of the land before Fury and his people sniffed him out, brought him down. 

Weeks, months, of questions and tests and escapes (of course there were escapes, whatever happens, he'll always be a Bat), and and the end of it, a job offer. (Nick Fury works in mysterious ways.)

"Yeah, well," Clint says, casting about for something to say. "I guess not."

Phil (Tim) glances at him, sees the way Clint's fighting to make sense of things, of him. "I'm still the same person," he says, because he is. For better or worse, this world has changed him, shaped him into the person he is now, but. He's never lied about who he is, here. (A new world, why waste the opportunity to be more than he was?)

Clint looks at him, angry, hurt. "I don't even know your name."

Phil (Tim) smiles, faint quirk of his mouth. Echoes from a different time, a different place. ( _We're young, but Just us._ ) 

"Tim. My name," he says when Clint looks askance at him. "Tim Drake."

********

"Well," Tony says, something incomprehensible in his eyes as he looks at Phil (Tim). "I guess this explains a few things."

Phil (Tim) looks at him, eyebrow raised.

Tony waves a hand to where Steve and the others are running a bonding exercise cleverly disguised as training. 

There's a heatwave going on, tempers starting to fray, and. It pays to take a page from Dick's playbook once in a while, to remember not everything has to be life and death. ("Water guns, really?" Clint asked when Phil (Tim) set the box down and stepped back to let them pick their weapons.) 

"You haven't run screaming." Tony pauses because he's _Tony_. "Yet."

Phil (Tim) rolls his eyes, mouth curving up just the tiniest bit. "I have some experience in the area, Stark." (A lifetime ago, fifteen years and change.)

Tony gives him a look. "I'm sorry," he says after a moment because, and he's so good at making others forget this, Tony knows what it means to lose people, either to death or some other factor. 

Phil (Tim) nods, throat tight. It's not. This life he's made for himself isn't perfect, but the one he'd had before hadn't been either. He misses his friends, his family so strongly some days it's like a phantom limb, the ache of what was, what used to be. But then there are days like this one. Days where his family, one he hadn't asked for, sure as hell hadn't anticipated, reminds him of what he has now, and that. It's enough.

"Don't be," Phil (Tim) says, looking back at the others in time to see Steve and Natasha join forces against Clint and Thor, Bruce standing on the sidelines, a calculating look on his face. (Waiting for Tony, his partner in crime to enter the fray.)

A quick look at Tony, something warm and content unfurling in his chest because this. _His team_.

Tony looks at him, and smiles at whatever expression is on Phil's (Tim's) face. "Come on," he says, clapping a hand on Phil's (Tim's) shoulder. "We can't let these losers have all the fun."

Phil (Tim) raises an eyebrow at that, because really? But. 

Fifteen years and change, and he's found - made - himself a home, somewhere he belongs. Just as hard, difficult as the first one, but no less treasured.

**Author's Note:**

> Er. There were random thoughts, and suddenly Tim Drake is actually Phil Coulson. *hands*


End file.
